Gujarat Lions Grabbed A Five wicket Victory Over Kolkata Knight Riders

As Dinesh Karthik scored his 3rd century of the ongoing IPL season, it led Gujarat Lions to a spectacular 5 wicket victory over Kolkata Knight Riders on Sunday at the Eden Gardens. With this win, Gujarat jumped to the top of the points table and KKR dropped their position to the third after suffering a disappointing fourth defeat.

Gujarat won the toss and skipper Raina elected to field first. KKR had a disastrous start where Gujarat bowlers proved skipper Raina’s decision to bowl first right. KKR lost four wickets in the first six over of their innings. Opener Gautam Gambhir was clean bowled by Praveen in the third over and two balls later Manish Pandey was dismissed by Praveen.

KKR was struggling at 15 with the loss of two wickets. Robin Uthappa joined the dismissal row as he was sent back by Dhawal Kulkarni and just two overs later Raina caught the wicket of Surya Kumar Yadav.

KKR was nowhere in the game till Yusuf Pathan and Shakib came and took charge. They literally saved KKR from a disaster as they helped the team to post a competitive score. Yusuf using his experience targeted the spinners and smashed unbeaten 63 off 41 balls including 7 fours and 1 six.

After ten overs KKR was at 57 runs. Shakib was supporting Pathan well as he also smashed unbeaten 66 runs off 49 balls, with four sixes and four boundaries. Both of them smashed half century and remained unbeaten.

After the innings of KKR the team made a challenging total of 158 runs with the loss of 4 wickets.

Now it was Lions’ time and Gujarat Got off to a good start. All top order batsmen contributed in the win of Gujarat. Dwayne Smith and Brendon McCullum started the chase patiently and after five overs Gujarat was playing at 36 runs without any loss. Smith made 27 runs off 18 balls and after hitting the first six of the innings he was dismissed by Shakib in the sixth over of the game. McCullum increased the tempo and started hitting massive shots but was soon caught by Manish Pandey Caught by Manish Pandey in the 8th over.

Dinesh Karthik was playing smartly as he maintained his momentum while batting and with Suresh Raina on the other side he led Gujarat to 89/2 by the completion of 9th over.The Gujarat past the 100-run mark in 11.3 overs and the duo of Raina and Karthik was still playing. Andre Russell dismissed Raina for 14 in the 14th over,the wicket was important to KKR but Karthik was still making runs on the other side.

 Aaron Finch came out and hit a quickfire as he smashed 29 runs off 10 balls.

Karthik made his 3rd half century of the season but soon was dismissed by B. Hogg in the 17th over of the game. Finch was scoring but he got ran out in the 18th over of the game after a mixed up with Ravindra Jadeja.

Dwayne Bravo came but a blazing 6 of Jadeja took Gujarat to finally win over KKR.

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9 May, 2016
Avni S. Singh